Roadmap Prioritisation: a Product Manager’s Most Challenging Task
As a product leader, you face one of the most exciting but difficult challenges: how do you prioritise features — which all feel important and valuable — given your resources and time limits? It’s the perfect recipe for sleepless nights for most product managers.
Earlier in my career, as a founder and product head of my startup (Rekinza), I struggled with this issue on a regular basis. We were on a mission to deliver the best pre-owned e-commerce experience in India and only had six months to do it. I had many nightmares over my choices. But, after hours of reading, feedback from others, and personal trial and error, I’ve arrived at a few methods that I believe will help you make roadmap decisions in a more user-centric and data-driven manner.
The core of the matter
Imagine a car with an amazing sound system, a world-class engine, and the looks of a Ferrari. If this car does not have any wheels, however, one cannot use it to accomplish the obvious, core task of going from point A to point B. So if transportation is one of the desired outcomes of owning that car, it is of no use to a customer.
Similarly, product managers must ensure that they focus on features that allow the customer to complete the core task of a product in a simple and efficient way. And with a better sooner-than-later mindset, once a path is laid out for the core tasks, you are compelled to put the other features on the ‘coming soon’ list.
One way to focus on the core task is to create a list of activities that lead to completing this task and then finding the shortest and most common path. The shortest path and the activities in it are the main features you need to build before releasing this product. The absence of even one of these activities would lead to a use case failure for a core task and, as a result, would mean your customers are dissatisfied with your product.
Must-have vs. good-to-have
When starting a new product or feature, we are tempted to create the best and most innovative version possible. However, focusing on basic features before adding enhancements is key. This focus ensures we complete and introduce the feature on time.
For example, while creating an e-commerce website, we decided as a team to spend a lot of time on the homepage design and visuals. However, because we were so focused on the homepage, we skimped on some basic product discovery requirements to meet our tight deadline. As a result, our first release saw great success in terms of a very low bounce rate on the homepage, but conversions were low because customers could not find their desired products easily.
Learning from my experience, I ensured that we focused on getting the basic features right from the get-go at Kite, when we planned our roadmap for the new Kite Tab product. We avoided focusing too much on just one feature, which helped us release a quality product within our deadline.
One meeting to rule them all
At Kite, whenever I find myself choosing between three to four big features and loads of different opinions, I conduct a simple team exercise with the heads of our technical, sales, and support teams to determine the best way forward. We measure and debate the value of each feature as well as the time and effort required to build them.
Each participant adds valuable insights, such as:
- Technical team: the estimated time and effort to build the feature, based on its complexity.
- Sales team: marketing insights and product value for potential target customers.
- Relationship and support team: insights from our customers and their biggest asks.
As everyone is part of the decision-making process, we all understand the reason behind each choice and are more invested in the decided outcome. Therefore, we are also more likely to deliver on our commitments.
At Kite, we believe no one person has the complete context on the product, technology, and market. Therefore, a collaborative culture helps get multiple buy-ins and a 360-degree view of the situation.
Roadmaps have been a constant part of my product journey from Rekinza to Kite, and the methods mentioned above have evolved to be adaptable to various situations based on the product’s stage, industry, medium, age, etc.
Be patient, be experimental, be fearless, and let your roadmap methods evolve through trial and error. Every Product Manager will, through thoughtful and consistent effort, soon find their own sweet spot in the mystery that is roadmap prioritisation.
